Playing for a cos

Don’t be alarmed if one day you suddenly find yourself eye to eye with that terrifying monster from Alien, or find yourself face to face with the Dark Lord Sauron of the Lord of the Ring fame. Before you start screaming "Invasion!" or "Mars attacks!" and running like a headless chicken, stop and take a closer look at these creatures. Chances are, these scary figures are just cosplayers playing their roles to the hilt.

For the uninitiated, cosplay is a contraction of the words "costume" and "play". A cosplayer’s goal is to dress up in his favorite manga, anime or video games character. Why? To have fun, of course.

Robert Wong, one of the leading cosplayers in the country, considers this dressing-up game as a mere hobby. But his creations are not something to sneeze at. The thirtysomething online gamer began his passion for cosplaying about five years ago when he joined the first ever nationwide cosplay convention – the Anime Explosion 2000.

"I was an anime enthusiast and didn’t know much about cosplay then," says Robert, whose first brush with anime was in high school with the Macross and Robotech sagas. He remembers trooping to Filbar’s and buying those P80 comicbooks, as well as turning on the television to watch Dragonball Z and Sailormoon episodes when these animated shows were all the rage.

While some cosplayers don human forms – such as characters from cartoon, video games, book heroes and movies – and others dress up as monsters, Wong would rather be a mecha player. Mecha is a Japanese term that describes anything robotic, such as Voltes V and Gundam.

"I don’t do cloth. I’m more on weapons and armors," says Robert, a graphic artist for Teriyaki Boy. Not wanting to be the butt of speculations, he clarifies that the famous Japanese restaurant chain hired him because of his interest in Japanese culture and not because he has made a name in cosplaying.

So far, he has made around 10 costumes and has given life to such classic characters as LOTR’s Lord Sauron, which he donned for a sci-fi convention. He was also seen operating an APU – armored personnel unit – from The Matrix in one of these conventions. Other memorable creations include the Zerg, an alien race from the Star Craft universe, and the ugly Alien head knocker cyborg.

"We try to make the costumes as grand as possible but as affordable as possible. My costumes, believe or not, cost no more than P2,000. One spider costume I made, for instance, only cost P980," says Robert. The trick, he says, is to source really cheap materials from Divisoria and Marikina. Mind you, Robert can make almost anything from common materials like bamboo, PVC pipes, styrofoam, rubber sheets and putting these all together by industrial type glue. And a word of warning to smokers: 90 percent of cosplay materials are extremely flammable, so better snuff out the smokes if you don’t want to look like the monsters you’re playing.

According to Robert’s girlfriend and fellow cosplayer Jewel Pineda, the Philippines’ cosplayers’ advantage over Japan, a country where cosplaying is a very popular pastime, is the cheaper cost of materials. "For this reason, we are able to do more and be more creative," says Jewel, a software quality analyst by profession. A dedicated cosplayer, Jewel once waited in a tailor’s house till the wee hours of the morning just to see how a High Wizard costume would turn out. "If one is not careful, cosplaying could take a toll on one’s professional life," she cautions.

Lesser mortals would probably be so attached to their cosplay creations but not Robert. He doesn’t keep the costumes but recycles them instead.

"One good thing about cosplay is that it develops one’s self-confidence. But one has to be careful too and not be too overconfident. If one’s not careful, being the center of attention could make one’s head swell and it’s not good," says Robert, a UP Fine Arts graduate.

He credits ArtFarm’s Nina Caligula for starting the Anime Explosion in 2000 and which gave cosplayers a venue to strut their stuff. He also cites the contribution of leading cosplayer JM Chua for putting the Philippines on the cosplaying map, as well as Mina Reyes, for creating a forum for Pinoy cosplayers to interact with one another, the www.filcosplay.tk.

"We’re very showbiz when it comes to cosplaying. We’re the first to feature cosplaying as a fashion show where we could pose, say a line or act out the character. In the US, all they do is just walk around. Lately, ginagaya na tayo ng Hong Kong," states Robert.

According to Robert, the youngest cosplayer in the country is a five-year-old enthusiast; the oldest, 34 years old. Cosplaying gives them a chance to act out their wildest sci-fi fantasies and live extraordinary lives for a brief moment before returning to their so-so lives as accountants, biochemists, computer programmers, etc. Currently, there are about 500 cosplayers in the country.

"My fear is that one day, people would just forget about this, and that they’d think it’s just a fad. Some people do this for the prize and popularity, but I do this for fun. It’s a hobby," says Robert, who cites Level Up, the online gaming pioneer who introduced the very popular Ragnarok and its newest, Rose Online, for encouraging companies to sponsor cosplaying and cosplaying conventions.

For Robert, the ‘cuteness’ factor of both Ragnarok and Rose Online is a plus especially in attracting the young cosplayers. For one, a player can customize a character and has a wide variety of clothes and uniforms to choose from. Accessories – from dolls to wings, goggles to masks – abound. Weapons, which is Robert’s specialty, are also a common feature in this game about the World of Seven Planets.

So are we going to see Robert in a Rose Online costume soon? He’s keeping his options open. Although he’s not much into clothes costume, there are surely interesting weapons in Rose Online that could tease his imagination. Jewel, a Rose Online player who plays a female hawker in one of the planets (Wong plays a soldier), is looking at the possibilities.

"The costumes are not very complicated although they have more layers," she says, who’ll probably end up having a Rose Online costume one of these days.

Whatever Robert and Jewel decide to make in the next few months, it would definitely be worth the wait. And we don’t mean Halloween costumes, people.